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IAEA Contradicts Iranian Claims on Testing Methods By Joe Fiorill Iran has acknowledged testing some of its centrifuges with uranium hexafluoride beginning June 25, but has denied introducing the material before then. The IAEA said last week that full safeguards measures are in place for the current testing. The agency added, as was reported last week by several media outlets, that IAEA environmental samples taken from Natanz between March and June “revealed particles of high enriched uranium” (see GSN, Sept. 2). The assertions appear in a confidential report submitted to the IAEA Board of Governors last week by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and obtained yesterday by Global Security Newswire. Brookings Institution Science and Technology Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies Michael Levi said yesterday “the report is more damning than the press leaks have suggested.” The report is to be discussed beginning Monday at an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, and the matter could be referred to the U.N. Security Council if the board is not satisfied with Iran’s transparency. “The biggest issue is: Did Iran enrich uranium?” said Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright. “What you have in this report,” said the former IAEA inspector, “is a steady drumbeat that says, ‘We still don’t know whether Iran is telling the truth when it says it never enriched uranium in Iran.’” Also at issue is whether Iran will sign the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, a move that would permit the agency to conduct more intrusive monitoring of Iranian nuclear activities. While urging Iran to adopt the measures, many observers say the protocol would be an insufficient check against potential Iranian development of nuclear weapons. IAEA Findings Contradict Iranian Assertions Iran has acknowledged that in 1991, China provided it with 1,000 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride, as well as smaller quantities of uranium tetrafluoride and uranium dioxide. According to the IAEA report, though, officials from Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization told IAEA experts who visited the country this summer that the centrifuge facility had been developed with information acquired from open sources, without conducting any tests involving uranium. Specifically, Iranian officials told the IAEA last month that “no experiments with inert or UF6 gas were conducted,” according to the report. Iran first said in February that its tests of centrifuge rotors, as part of design and development work begun in 1997, were conducted without nuclear material. The Iranian statements are contradicted by the IAEA’s assertion that testing with uranium hexafluoride must have taken place at Natanz. The IAEA report says its experts concluded that “it is not possible to develop enrichment technology to the level seen at Natanz based solely on open source information and computer simulations without process testing with UF6.” In a related finding, IAEA experts determined in March that about 1.9 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride was missing from two cylinders at an Iranian site. Iran has said the loss could have resulted from “leakage from the cylinders resulting from mechanical failure of the valves and possible evaporation,” according to last week’s report. Levi expressed doubt about Iran’s leakage claim, though, and both he and Albright said the quantity of material in question could be used to test uranium centrifuges. “It’s enough to operate one test stand for a while,” said Albright. Meanwhile, the IAEA said in its report that it is waiting to test a third, larger cylinder, but cannot do so until necessary equipment is installed at Natanz by Iran. “So basically,” Levi said, “the Iranians control the timeline.” In the case of the highly enriched uranium discovered at Natanz, the finding contradicts Iran’s assertion that, as paraphrased in the IAEA report, “no nuclear material was introduced to the PFEP prior to the agency’s having taken its first baseline environmental samples.” The IAEA’s sampling was completed before June 11, when it submitted results to Iran, and Tehran denies introducing uranium hexafluoride into a centrifuge before June 25. Iran said last month that the enriched uranium particles found at Natanz “must have resulted from contamination originating from centrifuge components which had been imported by Iran,” according to the report. In media reports, experts have identified Pakistan as the foreign source in question, a charge Pakistan has denied. Albright said yesterday that last week’s report appears to support the charge. “The finger points at Pakistan as the source … probably not the government, but scientists or companies or agents of Pakistan,” he said. IAEA Work Continues “Additional work is … required to enable the agency to arrive at conclusions about Iran’s statements that there have been no uranium enrichment activities in Iran involving nuclear material. The agency intends to complete its assessment of the Iranian statement that the high enriched uranium particles identified in samples taken at Natanz could be attributable to contamination from imported components,” the report reads. “Iran has agreed to provide the agency with all information about the centrifuge components and other contaminated equipment it obtained from abroad, including their origin and the locations where they have been stored and used in Iran, as well as access to those locations, so that the agency may take environmental samples,” the IAEA went on. One location where the IAEA has already taken such samples is a Kalaye Electric Co. facility in Tehran. IAEA inspectors took the samples last month “with a view to assessing the role of that company in Iran’s enrichment R&D [research and development] program,” according to the report, but the facility had undergone “considerable modification” since a prior visit in March, a fact experts called suspicious. The results of sampling on the Kalaye premises were not yet available when the IAEA report was issued last week. Additional Protocol, Other Measures Sought In remarks issued in response to last week’s media reports on the director general’s report, the IAEA said that “ultimately … the only way to build high confidence in the peaceful nature of their nuclear program is for Iran to sign and bring into force an Additional Protocol to their safeguards agreement with the IAEA.” Albright said Iran “has to demonstrate transparency and implement the protocol.” He dismissed concerns that a failure to sanction Iran for its acknowledged past omissions in reporting and for the inconsistencies implicit in the latest IAEA findings could set a bad example. “You’re so used to being lied to,” said Albright, “that progress is when people start telling you the truth.” Levi said the protocol could be useful if accompanied by further concessions from Iran. “There’s a point in concluding an Additional Protocol if it is concurrent with Iran giving up everything except the Bushehr power plant,” he said, referring to Iran’s major nuclear power plant, which is currently being built by Russia. Albright said the Bush administration would like to see Iran give up even the Bushehr facility but that there is “no way” Iran will halt work at the facility. As for Natanz, he said, “many countries cannot live with Iran operating” the facility, but “you have to offer Iran something” in return for shutting Natanz down. The concern about Natanz stems from the facility’s high potential for producing nuclear weapon material. In an article in the September/October issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Albright and ISIS colleague Corey Hinderstein estimate that the eventual production capacity at Natanz would fall far short of the amount needed to fuel all the reactors Iran says it plans to build, but that “the same capacity would be sufficient to produce about 500 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium annually.” “At 15-20 kilograms per weapon, that would be enough for roughly 25-30 nuclear weapons per year,” they write, adding that Iran could also make low-enriched uranium fuel at Natanz for a time, eventually gaining the capacity to “produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon in a few days.” Levi said Iran should be required “at the very least … [to] halt further work until the further tests can be done” by the IAEA, but he expressed doubt about whether the IAEA board in its current form would remit the matter to the Security Council, where the threat of economic and other sanctions could sway Iran. In June, 15 Nonaligned Movement (NAM) countries on the board prevented the matter from going to the council (see GSN, June 19). “For the NAM,” said Levi, “the priority is … to minimize the barriers to nuclear power. … I don’t know what will convince the NAM folks.” Levi and Hinderstein write in their Bulletin article that, in order to encourage progress in the matter, the United States and others should offer “incentives” for Iran, Iran’s security concerns should be respected, and Washington and others should seek to restart talks on regional arms control in the Middle East. The IAEA said in its report that Iran has already demonstrated “an increased degree of cooperation” since June, but the agency added that “information and access were at times slow in coming and incremental, and that … there remain a number of important outstanding issues, particularly with regard to Iran’s enrichment program, that require urgent resolution.” “Continued and accelerated cooperation and full transparency on the part of Iran are essential for the agency to be in a position to provide at an early date the assurances required by member states,” the report says.
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